This appeared in my FB memories from a year ago, and I thought that what was said here went along well with my blog post of 2 days ago, especially at the point where I wrote “…there are methods of education that claim to teach virtue, where a student does tons of memorizing of things and performing of those things … and I see the outcome of persons with a ton of hubris — which I hope you know is not a Virtue.” In the FB post, I quoted someone (with permission) who was familiar with one of those methods (the name of which I chose to edit out. See brackets below), had used it herself for a time, and who gives witness to the results I shared above.
“I made my decision to homeschool with tears in my eyes reading Charlotte Mason’s Attainments of a six-year-old. THAT was what I wanted for my sons – what beauty! That was 12 years ago. We did 1 year of AO and then 3 years of [another curriculum] and I bought into all that was described because I had no clue what a good education looked like. They had studied it all! They had ‘put God in the center’. After my 3 years, I opened my own co-op with a combination of things I did [with the other curriculum] for the youngsters and AO. …And what I’ve found over these 12 years, including spending time with [that other curriculum’s] graduates – (and this is just my experience, and not intended to harm) – is a lack of love of the beauty of what God created and a desire to know Him with delight, in the classical model. They are sort of puffed up from what I’ve seen and focused more on how accomplished the child is, rather than how much they care.”
I’m considering a Part 2 (and more!) about the wrong way to read, the wrong way to acquire knowledge, and the wrong way to “dispense” knowledge”, and the results I have seen in my long life in the people that have come out of such systems. I’ve been making a list, checking it twice. You better watch out. Santa Kay is coming to town.
